pigz - A parallel implementation of gzip for modern multi-processor, multi-core machines

pigz, which stands for parallel implementation of gzip, it compresses using threads to make use of multiple processors and cores. The input is broken up in to 128 KB chunks with each compressed in parallel. The individual check value for each chunk is also calculated in parallel. The compressed data is written in order to the output, and a combined check value is calculated from the individual check values.